


soft as shadow

by bombcollar



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 17:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12611780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombcollar/pseuds/bombcollar
Summary: Artorias survives his encounter with Manus, but he cannot live a lie.





	soft as shadow

**Author's Note:**

> monster boy Artorias not nearly shown enough appreciation.  
> be the cryptid you want to see in the woods!

Votive candles arranged in neat rows in clear glass jars, white tallow and white flame. You cannot sleep in the dark any longer. Once, it was your home, the humid dark of the forest, steam rising from the soil and rotting wood. The dark of animal burrows, caves and deep, still pools. Prowling with your mother Alvina and your friend Sif through the early morning gloom when the fog was thick as wax. You strode the warm darkness like you’d been born there. Like a bird takes to the sky, a horse to the wide, flat prairie, in a way it felt like you belonged.

But like a swimmer who’d nearly drowned at sea, what once was a comfort now clutches your heart with cold fingers every time you close your eyes. Every time you try to sleep, your mind drifts and you see eyes burning like coals in the blue-black Abyss. But it isn’t him, it isn’t Manus, his face in ribbons of bone, the huge molars that grabbed you and tried to crush you like a cheap piece of tin. It was the disparity of a place you’d found comfort in bearing down on you, forcing your breath from your chest. It felt like a betrayal. 

You lie awake until sunrise on a bed that is too soft, watching the marble slowly turn from blue to gold.

* * *

You are Artorias, knight of Gwyn. You defeated the darkness. Except, nobody could  _ defeat  _ the darkness. You may as well ride into the ocean and try to slay it, or throw spears at a hurricane. The cavern was sealed and Manus was finally put to permanent rest… but not by you. 

There is nothing worth celebrating about Oolacile, except perhaps that it wasn’t worse. In time the forest will swallow it, the bloodstained stone will erode to nothing, but the land will never be the same. An entire civilization swallowed. Still, the rest of your people need a hero. The undead who banished the beast disappeared not long after and so there is nobody to contest your claims. Only the other knights know the truth, Ciaran and Gough. Ornstein left ages ago, to search for his master. With any luck, he'll never know what transpired, what you actually are.

Your armor and sword can be repaired, but your arm will never work right again. The knights of Gwyn are not human, but you may be the least human of them… or the most, if the origins of humanity are considered. Manus’s blows did not shatter your bones, for you have none, soft as a shadow, a thing almost without form, without a face. You fill your armor like a clam in its shell, a facsimile of human shape. It holds you together but you leak, you tremble and ooze like an overripe fruit, like you’re rotting and nothing can flush what’s soaked into you. 

You are allowed time to recover, but soon they come calling. They’ve heard your tales, they’re your Lord's people, and they want your help. You are a commodity. It would be selfish to refuse when you know you could face more minor horrors, but you cannot go back into the darkness. 

* * *

Ciaran tells you she doesn’t want to do this anymore either, and it makes you feel a little less alone. She’s slain thousands of heretics, but even the lowest and most lecherous sinner was nothing compared to what she saw that day. Humanity’s disrespect for the dead, their ability to be plied by the slick words of a serpent, their willingness to dig their dirty fingers into whatever they came across. It was if they did not want to be saved, and so she would not save them.

She had already lost one friend to their selfishness. Gough, who liked to joke that there was no more use for him with no dragons to shoot from the air. Gough had been worth as much as any human, as much as a hundred humans, but she knew why he’d retreated to a solitary life in the forest. No matter how many drakes he brought down, how gentle his giant hands, how many kind words he had, it was not enough for those who saw him as a monster. He grew weary of the constant harassment, those who wanted to see him snap and prove them right. So he’d left Anor Londo, left his friends and fellow giants, to live where he wouldn’t be bothered. 

Ciaran says she feels she is only counting down the days until the next disaster. She used to believe she could do anything as long as she had her blades in hand, but now she isn’t so sure. What can an assassin do against simple negligence? Steel cannot cut entropy. You want to comfort your friend, put a lanky arm around her like you used to, but you’re worried you’ll smear her with that blue-black liquid that seeps from your skin. “It isn’t selfish to want peace,” she says. “But we can’t sit back and expect peace to spontaneously happen…”

Neither of you is certain what to say to comfort the other. There is no answer to this riddle, and you’re both so tired of fighting. The sun is going down again, and you will have to sleep eventually.

* * *

 

You swore you would not tread upon this cursed ground again, but your feet miss the soft give of the mossy forest floor. Anor Londo's marble slabs are cold, unyielding. Like a tomb. They offer protection but no acceptance, and you know in your heart that you were never meant to live in such a place. 

Sif's thick, musky fur swallows your fingers as you hold onto her neck, matching her long strides as you both head back into the forest. You must see your former fellow. Gough, always like a dear uncle to you and many others, a wall that weathered storms and kept its hearth warm for those in need.

Often  you wonder how Gough got up to his perch in the tower in the first place, or where he found the wood for his carvings. There are so many scattered about, their abstract, jovial faces in clusters like strange mushrooms. "Artorias," he welcomes you, as if he sees you every day. "I hardly expected you to come back so soon... This is a haunted place, but in time life will return to it. I'm looking forward to watching it grow back, bit by bit."

You find a space among the carvings and sit. You are not in your armor, but in soft leathers, just enough to hold your shape and let you disappear into the shadows if you so chose. For a while, that's all you do, sit next to him and listen to the rhythmic scraping of his knife against wood, the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves, the sounds of Sif pacing and pawing at the dirt below. Gough does not ask why you came, content to sit and wait for you to give him that information, if you so choose. 

Eventually, you ask him if he's happy here. If he wishes he was still a knight of Gwyn. If he feels he made the right decision.

He rumbles thoughtfully. "I am... content. Do I wish I could still serve our Lord, and protect his people? Of course... But I wanted to be happy, as well, and I could not be happy where I was."

Sometimes, you say, you want to tell them all it's a lie. But Gwyn would be furious. You don't know what he'd do.

"Dear Artorias... I cannot claim to be wise, but you don't sound very happy to me. People love their heroes, but there will always be more heroes. Always."

* * *

 

Night falls, and once again you find yourself sleepless, even after the tiring trek back from the forest. Gwyndolin sits at your bedside, tea in hand. You lay in a puddle on your mattress, an exhausted inkblot. There is tea for you as well, but you haven't touched it.

"Can your kind die without sleep?" She asks you, sounding as curious as she is concerned, peering at you with one pearly serpent. You say you're not sure, but you doubt it. Whatever you are, it has ascended with your knighthood. 

At once, when you were both naught but children, you found her crying at the shore of the basin in Darkroot. She'd shouted at you to leave her alone, but you'd stayed. Before you became a knight of Gwyn, you served only her, as a Blade of the Darkmoon. Her message of justice without corruption had sung to you. Even upon being given your prestigious title as a Knight of Gwyn, you'd held to these ideals.

You are certain Gwyndolin has more important matters to attend to, but here she is, regardless. Her hand finds your claws, nearly-weightless darkness wrapping itself around her pale fingers. A Blade did what they knew was right, even if they did not know why, allowing the moonlight to guide their actions, judging not. While judgement was the territory of the moon, so too was lack of judgement. 

You pray together as the candles burn low, for strength, for confidence. By daybreak, you know what you must do.

* * *

 

You leave little as a goodbye, a bundle of wilted white flowers at your marble portrait, along with your sword, and Sif’s. Though she whines and covers your face in damp kisses, you must take nothing of that self with you, lest you be tempted to return. Dark blue droplets follow you out, down many spiraling stairs, eventually vanishing at the edge of the royal wood. You are needed here, in the place you were born, beneath the shadows of the leaves, within the tangled roots and fragrant soil. You cannot be the hero that they want, so you simply will not be, at all. 

You are not Artorias any more. You are simple, fluid shadow, racing alongside your wolf companion, nestling in the piles of wooden faces in the giant’s tower, lurking and waiting for the opportunity to help in your own thankless way. You cannot be a hero any longer, but maybe, just maybe, you can be happy.


End file.
